This invention relates to mobile communications and, more particularly, to adapting messaging content between different types of mobile terminal stations with minimal need for signaling.
Mobile telephone systems are evolving beyond the known voice communications. For instance, one GSM operator offers a service where a short message can be sent to a dedicated server, requesting the server to send a greeting card via surface mail to the recipient. The user with a PC accesses a web page where the available postcards are listed and chooses one of the cards. Each card has a unique ID. The user writes a short message using his GSM cellular phone containing fields such as card ID, name of recipient, address of recipient, and greeting. He then sends the short message to a dedicated server. Upon receipt of the message, the server sends the requesting cellular phone a confirmation (SMS) message if the message was acceptable and a charge is added to the user""s phone bill. Otherwise, an error SMS message is sent back to the cellular phone without any charge being registered. If everything was acceptable, then the mailman carries a real, physical postcard containing the greetings to the recipient.
New services are evolving on the Internet as well. A popular new service provided on the internet is to send yourself, or anyone you know, a virtual greeting card. The recipient will receive an e-mail containing a URL pointing to the place where he can fetch his virtual greeting card or multimedia file. The notification is similar every time, simply containing the URL and perhaps a password or other identification information. Such pages are becoming ubiquitous.
An electronic greeting card store is known for mobile communications from U.S. Pat. No. 5,426,594 to Wright et al. Wright et al show an electronic greeting card communication system that includes a first personal communicator, an electronic mail server, and a second personal communicator. The first communicator accepts off-line selection of an electronic greeting card from a user, and then transmits a request message corresponding to the off-line-selection. The electronic mail server receives the request message and then wirelessly transmits an electronic greeting card message to the second personal communicator. The second personal communicator selectively receives the wireless transmitted electronic greeting card message and presents it to a user.
In recent years, data services have become popular for mobile communications systems, including the very popular short messaging service (SMS) that employs underutilized bandwidth of signaling channels to allow short text messages. A new use for SMS is a picture messaging application for cellular telephones that is presently being offered by the assignee hereof for allowing users to create and download picture messages into his or her proprietary mobile telephone (e.g., Nokia 3210 GSM) and send them to another, like proprietary telephone (another Nokia 3210 or a Nokia 8210 or Nokia 8850). With a likewise proprietary messaging platform (e.g., Nokia Artus Messaging Platform), operators are able to enhance usage of Short Message Service (SMS) for their subscribers. Such a simple graphic message service provides a black-and-white picture, for instance 72xc3x9728 pixels, along with a short greeting displayed below the picture. A maximum size of the greeting is specified, for example 120 characters.
The popularity of the internet and the coming explosion of bandwidth therein points to new multimedia services, including picture, data, text, video, as well as audio being offered in future generation mobile communication networks.
It can be foreseen that simple graphic message services for mobile communications systems will evolve into more capable image message services with. It is already possible to send a (reduced size) JPEG file with personal contact information from a Nokia 9110 communicator to another such communicator using several messages to send the information. SMS (or paging) messages are not particularly good for JPEG or multimedia files, due to their low bandwidth. Although the simple graphic message service described above can be provided with platforms similar to SMS, such an image message service evolution will eventually require more capable image message service centers (IMSC) to perform the store and forward operations. Beyond that, multimedia message services are foreseen that enable messaging with full content versatility, including images, audio, video, data and text from terminal to terminal or from terminal to internet. Instead of an IMSC, a multimedia message service center (MMSC) is foreseen.
A communication network terminal supporting a plurality of applications is known from WO 97/32439. This patent publication discloses a method for routing an inbound SMS message to an application based on the header information in the received message. Older cellular phones, and even newer ones, may not display the received message or they do not have the capability to show specially-formatted messages. Normally they will display a message to the user saying xe2x80x9cdata message, cannot display contentxe2x80x9d, or similar, especially if the message contains a lot of data.
A problem with developing all of these different capabilities in parallel with an operating and evolving infrastructure is that many different types of content are being used, and users wish to be able to send their messages, regardless of type, from one phone to another, and not meet with refusal or total incapability on the part of the recipient to receive a given type of content. Although not all phones support every type of simple image, JPEG image, video, animation or the like, most phones likely have some capability. The receiving phone may, for instance, not have a graphic display or its display capabilities may be insufficient to display the image sent by the sending phone but may be able to handle SMS. Presently, images can only be sent to phones that are known to have the required image or multimedia capabilities. If an image message is sent to a phone that cannot show the image, the message is lost. The problem is how to adapt the content automatically so that it, or a part of the content, can be presented by most any phone.
An object of the present invention is to show how an image message can be adapted to the capabilities of the receiving terminal so that, even if the terminal cannot display the message fully, the message is not lost, but is adapted to the capabilities of the receiving terminal, and the user is provided with alternative means to view the content.
According to a first aspect of the invention, a method for use by a mobile station in a mobile communications system in receiving a service from an application service center, comprises the steps of the mobile station receiving a short message, the mobile station determining whether the short message indicates that a special application is required in the mobile station and, if not, processing the short message as a short message and, if so, determining whether the special application is supported in the mobile station and, if not, processing the short message as a short message and, if so, requesting an application service center to provide a service usable according to the special application, the mobile station receiving the service in the form of a special content message from the application service center, and the mobile station processing the special content message according to the special application.
According to a second aspect of the invention, a method for use by an application service center in providing a special content message provided by an originating mobile station in a mobile communications system to a terminating mobile station in the system, comprises the steps of the center receiving the special content message from the originating mobile station with a request to send the special content message to the terminating mobile station and providing a short message to the terminating mobile station with a part of the short message indicating that a special application is required in the terminating mobile station to fully process the special content message and with a textual part of the short message for use by the terminating mobile station in the event that the special application is not supported by the terminating mobile station, the center receiving a request from the terminating mobile station that the special content message be sent, and the center sending the special content message to the terminating mobile station in response to the request from the terminating mobile station or in the absence of a request from the terminating mobile station, posting the special content message on an internet web page accessible according to the textual part of the short message.
According to a third aspect of the invention, a method for use in a mobile communications system including an application service center for providing a special content message provided by an originating mobile station of the system to a terminating mobile station of the system comprises the steps of the center receiving the special content message from the originating mobile station with a request to send the special content message to the terminating mobile station and providing a short message to the terminating mobile station with a part of the short message indicating that a special application is required in the terminating mobile station to fully process the special content message and with a textual part of the short message for use by the terminating mobile station in the event that the special application is not supported by the terminating mobile station, the terminating mobile station receiving the short message, the terminating mobile station determining whether the short message indicates that a special application is required in the terminating mobile station and, if not, processing the short message as a short message and, if so, determining whether the special application is supported in the terminating mobile station and, if not, processing the short message as a short message and, if so, sending a request to the application service center to provide the special content message, the center receiving the request from the terminating mobile station that the special content message be sent, the center sending the special content message to the terminating mobile station, the terminating mobile station receiving the special content message from the application service center, and the terminating mobile station providing the special content message to the user according to the special application.
According to a fourth aspect of the invention, a mobile station for use in a mobile communications system for receiving a service from an application service center, comprises means for receiving a short message, means for determining whether the short message indicates that a special application is required in the mobile station and, if not, processing the short message as a short message and, if so, determining whether the special application is supported in the mobile station and, if not, processing the short message as a short message and, if so, requesting that the application service center provide a special content message for processing in the mobile station according to the special application, means for receiving the special content message from the application service center, and means for providing the special content message to a user of the mobile station according to the special application.
According to a fifth aspect of the invention, an application service center for use in providing a special content message requested or provided by an originating mobile station in a mobile communications system to a terminating mobile station in the system comprises means for receiving the special content message from the originating mobile station with a request to send the special content message to the terminating mobile station, means for providing a short message to the terminating mobile station with a part of the short message indicating that a special application is required in the terminating mobile station to fully process the special content message and with a textual part of the short message for use by the terminating mobile station in the event that the special application is not supported by the terminating mobile station, means for posting said special content message to a web page accessible according to said short message in said event, means for receiving a request from the terminating mobile station that the special content message be sent, and means for sending the special content message to the terminating mobile station.
According to a sixth aspect of the invention, a mobile communications system comprises an originating mobile station for providing a special content message with a destination address, a terminating mobile station with the destination address provided by the originating mobile station for receiving the special content message, an application service center for receiving the special content message from the originating mobile station with a request to send the special content message to the terminating mobile station, the center for providing a short message to the terminating mobile station with a part of the short message indicating that a special application is required in the terminating mobile station to fully process the special content message and with a textual part of the short message for use by the terminating mobile station in the event that the special application is not supported by the terminating mobile station and including means for posting said special content message to a web page accessible according to said short message in said event, wherein the terminating mobile station includes means for receiving the short message, means for determining whether the start message indicates that a special application is required in the terminating mobile station and, if not, processing the short message as a short message and, if so, determining whether the special application is supported in the terminating mobile station and, if not, processing the short message as a normal short message and, if so, sending a request to the application service center to provide a service usable according to the special application, the center having means for receiving the request from the terminating mobile station that the special content message be sent, as well as means for sending the special content message to the terminating mobile station, wherein the terminating mobile station has means for receiving the special content message from the application service center, as well as means for providing the special content message to a user of the terminating mobile station according to the special application.
Content adaptation taught by the present disclosure, if attempted according to the prior art, might have been done by negotiation between the phone and the server. The drawbacks of such an approach would be delays due to protocol handshakes and acknowledgements and additionally, capability negotiation would waste valuable bandwidth. In addition, the indirect result would be the need for an equipment register in the server, thereby increasing the server complexity. With the presented form of in-band signaling, the capability negotiation is done in one single message, with no need for retransmissions to negotiate content adaptation.
The functionality of the invention is not limited to phones supporting a particular vendor""s messaging, since the signaling is based on normal SMS. Therefore, any vendor""s phone could be used to receive the special content message. As any terminal can be used to receive special content messages, the takeoff of multimedia messaging services can be greatly speeded up, as there is no need to wait for a sufficient number of terminals to be distributed to the market before launch service will be effective. After receiving a few of the adapted special content messages, the receiving user will surely become interested in buying a phone that can display the whole special content message. Therefore, each adapted SMS is, in fact, an advertisement for the special application phone capable of displaying special content messages. Rapid deployment of the new service will shorten payback time of investments made.
These and other objects, features and advantages of the present invention will become more apparent in light of the detailed description of a best mode embodiment thereof, as illustrated in the accompanying drawing.